11 Common Mistakes You May Be Making in the Kitchen

You may think you're doing everything right in the kitchen, but you might be missing something.

You forgot you left the heat on high, and you walked away from the stove for a minute only to return to find a scorched and blackened piece of chicken. It happens — some of the best and most accomplished chefs can get distracted and slip up, but there might be some slipups that you’re making, and they’re not, that you don’t even realize.

Mistakes like burning, scorching, or boiling-over are all visible to the naked eye; when these things happen you know it, and then you know to start over. But we’re here to tell you about things that you don’t know you're doing, most specifically, common mistakes that you may be making in the kitchen that those talented chefs we mentioned earlier are not. Things like not seasoning pasta water, or waiting for your meat to rest, and even mishandling egg whites are mistakes that could be detrimental to your cooking, and just because you don’t see it as a mistake, doesn’t mean it’s not bad.

To help you get up to speed on what you could be doing wrong in the kitchen, we asked cooking expert Erika Monroe-Williams what she thought were frequent mistakes home cooks make, and how to fix them. As "The Hopeless Housewife" and a contestant on ABC’s The Taste, Monroe-Williams has spent plenty of time in the kitchen, and plenty of time helping others fix their cooking woes.

These mistakes are really easy to fix, and some you may have even heard of before but just haven’t put into practice yet. Know this, though: these are mistakes, and when you’re making them, you’re not being the best that you can be in the kitchen.

Anne Dolce is the Cook Editor at The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter @anniecdolce